|
|
Yet if a human being just is what cannot be pinned down or systematized in this way, then any ethics Levinas could give would violate this teaching.
This book develops a defense of Levinas against this critique. Chapter 1 explains the criticism itself and points out one of its assumptions—namely, that it is impossible for Levinas to develop a practical ethics because he thinks that the “human other” (autrui) cannot be comprehended. To assess this inference, however, we need to determine why he thinks that the human other cannot be comprehended, why the other is supposed to constitute an embodiment of the infinite. It is one thing to say that we cannot comprehend the proposition p and not p being true; it is another to say that some of the cities in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities cannot be comprehended. It is still another to point out that I cannot fully appreciate, from my perspective, what it is like for you, from yours, to taste a certain glass of chardonnay. It can be impossible to comprehend things for any number of reasons, and not all preclude or resist description or representation to the same extent or in the same ways.
Chapters 2 shows, in turn, that it is a mistake to think that Levinas’s rationale for insisting that the other cannot be comprehended precludes him from developing a practical ethics. My argument for this thesis is complex, and much of my explanation will have to wait until chapter 2, where I analyze a pivotal section of Totality and Infinity. I draw on work in analytic metaethics, particularly writings by analytic philosophers on moral realism, to clarify Levinas’s argument in this section, contending that he should be read as defending an extremely thoroughgoing form of moral realism. However, the gist of my argument is this. Levinas shows in Totality and Infinity that we cannot help but acknowledge others as having an unconditional claim on our care and support. He also notes that we tend to mischaracterize this relation by looking upon others as if they were objects of knowledge rather than responsibility. He uses terms such as “transcendence,” “infinitude,” and “absolute otherness” to stress how recognizing our responsibility for others compels us to make practical changes in our lives by engaging in acts of charity and justice. His point is not so much that the human other cannot be comprehended, but that it is a mistake, a dangerous one, to think of our relationship to her as one of knowing or cognition in the first place.